Kleinkarlbach is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

belonging to a ''

Verbandsgemeinde A (; plural ) is a low-level administrative division, administrative unit in the Germany, German States of Germany, federal states of Brandenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt. A is typically composed of a small group of Municipalitie ...

'', a kind of collective municipality – in the

Bad Dürkheim Bad Dürkheim () is a spa town in the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration. It is the seat of the Bad Dürkheim (district), Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, and the site of the discovery of the element caesium, in 1860. Geogra ...

district in

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Geography

Location

The municipality is a

winegrowing Viticulture (, "vine-growing"), viniculture (, "wine-growing"), or winegrowing is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. It is a branch of the science of horticulture. While the native territory of ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine, ...

centre and lies in the Palatinate in the northwest of the

Rhine-Neckar The Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region (, ), often referred to as the Rhein-Neckar Triangle, is a polycentric Metropolitan regions in Germany, metropolitan region located in south western Germany, between the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region to the nor ...

urban agglomeration. Kleinkarlbach belongs to the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Leiningerland, formed in 2018, whose seat is in

Grünstadt Grünstadt () is a town in the Bad Dürkheim (district), Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with roughly 13,200 inhabitants. It does not belong to any ''Verbandsgemeinde'' – a kind of collective municipality – but is noneth ...

, although that town is itself not in the ''Verbandsgemeinde''. Until 1969, the municipality belonged to the now abolished district of Frankenthal. Kleinkarlbach lies at the entrance to the Leiningen Valley (''Leininger Tal'') on the river Eckbach, which is part of the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

’s catchment area.

History

In 770, Kleinkarlbach had its first documentary mention in the

Lorsch codex The Lorsch Codex (Chronicon Laureshamense, Lorscher Codex, Codex Laureshamensis) is an important historical document created between about 1175 to 1195 AD in the Lorsch Abbey, Monastery of Saint Nazarius in Lorsch, Germany. The codex is handwrit ...

. In 873 it belonged to the Murbach Monastery. In 1309 it was granted as a fief to the

House of Leiningen The House of Leiningen is the name of an old German noble family whose lands lay principally in Alsace, Lorraine, Saarland, Rhineland, and the Palatinate. Various branches of this family developed over the centuries and ruled counties with Imp ...

. After the French Revolution it belonged to the Department of

Mont-Tonnerre Mont-Tonnerre () was a department of the First French Republic and later the First French Empire in present-day Germany. It was named after the highest point in the Palatinate, the '' Donnersberg'' ("Thunder Mountain", possibly referring to Do ...

(or Donnersberg in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

) and from 1813 to 1816 lay Kleinkarlbach under

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n administration, before it was annexed to the

Kingdom of Bavaria The Kingdom of Bavaria ( ; ; spelled ''Baiern'' until 1825) was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1806 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingd ...

as part of the ''Rheinkreis''.

Religion

In 1555, the

Reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the p ...

was introduced into the ''Leiningerland'' (lands held by the Counts of Leiningen) and Kleinkarlbach thereby became

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

. In 2007, 52.9% of the inhabitants were

Evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...

and 23.8%

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. The rest belonged to other faiths or adhered to none.

Politics

Municipal council

The council is made up of 12 council members, who were elected at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman. The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:

Coat of arms

The German blazon reads: ''In Gold ein grüner Wellenbalken.'' The municipality's

arms Arms or ARMS may refer to: *Arm or arms, the upper limbs of the body Arm, Arms, or ARMS may also refer to: People * Ida A. T. Arms (1856–1931), American missionary-educator, temperance leader Coat of arms or weapons *Armaments or weapons **Fi ...

might in English

heraldic Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branc ...

language be described thus: Or a fess wavy vert. The arms were approved in 1982 by the ''

Regierungsbezirk A ' (, 'governmental district') is a type of administrative division in Germany. Currently, four of sixteen ' (states of Germany) are split into '. Beneath these are rural and urban districts ' (plural, ) serve as regional mid-level local gov ...

'' government in Neustadt and date from a 1452 court seal in which the wavy stripe were slanted rather than fess (horizontal).Karl Heinz Debus: ''Das große Wappenbuch der Pfalz''. Neustadt an der Weinstraße 1988,

Famous people

Honorary citizens

* 1973: Irmgard Spiess * 2004: Honorary Consul Dr. Dieter Spiess

References

External links

Municipality’s official webpage

Kleinkarlbach in the collective municipality’s Web pages
Bad Dürkheim (district) {{BadDürkheim-geo-stub